a good student
by hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: In which she dreams. River Song-Melody Pond character study.


Streams of gold coo and course behind her eyes. When she sleeps, she sees the universe unraveling and rebuilding itself. When she listens to the music of her dreams, she hears Ood song lifting the static of the stars, with whooshing humming engines and the turning grind of the earth. She dreams about flying, about forests, about a white room in a dark place, about a woman with red hair and sad eyes, about a Roman with a sword and a river in the forest and a long, long wait and a madman with a box, and about a sneering mouth below an eyepatch. She dreams about aliens no one else sees, and aliens that laugh and bare sharp teeth, and aliens that heal and sing and dance.

She dreams about things that haven't happened yet, about things that happened before she was born, about things that can never or will never or should never happen. She dreams the history of planets now long dead, of stars that haven't even flared into life yet. She walks through forests and caves and library shelves, and she walks through them without fear and without her own face; the face she wears in the dream is strange, beautiful, but not her own, and she is not afraid, because she is never afraid. She dreams about people from fairy tales and people from films and people from history, people who never existed and people who are functionally immortal. She sees a planet burn forever, locked in time, and sees a planet freeze, and sees a planet drown. She sees time dance and scream and rattle windows, sees a web that's nothing like a web, a bubble that's not a bubble at all, and a banana that's the least banana-like banana possible.

She dreams warmth and love, sometimes. A red-haired woman peers down at her, big round eyes and a big round face and she is so, so sad. A man, an ordinary-looking man, but there's so much more to him: he's ancient and deadly and loves her, so much, and he'd do anything to get her back, she knows it. She dreams of other people, a blonde girl with too much makeup, who bites her lip and laughs and seems sad, too, everyone always seems sad. Another redhead, an older woman, who bickers and nags and loves more deeply than anyone before her. A beautiful black woman, who heals and protects and fights, who seems broken on the inside beneath the armor around her. A big bad wolf. A woman with stars in her eyes. A healer and a soldier and a mother all in one. A door in a mind that can never be opened. A friend left behind to save her life, a life rendered ruined and small by the saving.

She dreams, too, of murder, clinical and clever and calculating. This much pressure to break Gallifreyan skin. This many seconds between initial cell death and the beginning of the regeneration process. This many regenerations allowed by law, although that law burned with Gallifrey. She dreams the Gallifreyan alphabet, circling and swirling because the letters are meant to be in motion, not still and carved and written down. She dreams tall, hooded figures staring down at her, angry and cold and terrifying. She dreams their manipulations, their cheating, their control over all things and all peoples, a control they use for their own purposes. She dreams the way a human heart, so similar to a Time Lord's, leaks when stabbed, explodes when shot, evaporates when blasted. She dreams double heartbeats slowing and stuttering and stopping. She dreams slightly-stronger Gallifreyan muscles straining against her own, dreams the gasps of pain in a voice she hungers for, dreams of bullets piercing flesh and hands breaking bones and knives diving into organs so much like her own and yet so utterly wrong.

She dreams the history of the thing she's meant to kill, every face, every voice, every recorded appearance or infinitesimal sighting. She dreams scenarios: the Gamma Forests, the Flesh, Demon's Run, a snowy day on the fourth planet of a sun that hasn't burned into being yet. She dreams him dying a hundred times, a million, as many as it takes until he stops being reborn and dies for the last time. She dreams her hands snapping his neck, her hands stabbing his hearts, her hands ripping him limb from limb. She dreams the look on his face when she kills him for the last time. She dreams her triumph and her release and her first meeting with the parents he's been keeping hostage, torturing and endangering for untold centuries — because, you see, Melody Pond is a good student, and learns what she is taught.


End file.
